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Topic: Questions for Hasbro? (Read 58692 times)

Just curious about your designs for the Asharad Hett expanded universe two pack figure. Have you considered using 2 different head sculpts(1 with Tusken wrap/ 1 exposed tattooed human face) or trying a removeable 'Tusken mask' concept to accurately showed Hett's exposed tattooed face? I feel it important to show the characters' comic-accurate real face with tusken wrap as well to fully capture all the comics portayals of him. It would seem to me anyone can use any tusken head to do a custom of this character if they want so a tusken-head only design here won't suffice or satisfy. What do you think?

Sometimes questions like that will go through, depending on what is out there credible to back that question up (a strong rumor or whatnot), but in general we look for something that will get us a definitive answer if possible instead of a roll of the dice with the Q&A here at JD.

Last weeks question was so definitive.

1. Any chance we can get a picture of the Rebel Troopers from the "Capture of Tantive IV" Battle Pack without their helmets?

** We only have one picture available for one of the Rebel Troopers, and it's only with the helmet. We're sorry, but this is the best image we have for now.

This battle pack should be available in stores in few weeks/months. My understanding that it should have been released, but has been delayed. With all due respect I think someone could have selected a better question. The toyfair was less than 2 weeks away and I am sure there will be helmetless samples to photograph.

Keep up the good work submitting safe esoteric questions.

Here is a question for Hasbro.

If the decision was made today to produce a small to medium vehicle concept/prototype, roughly how long would it bring it to market/shelves. How does this process differ from figure development with respect to time.

Actually, we asked that because A) Hasbro's given us photos in the Q&A so we were testing that again... And B) it was something of a curiosity about the pack that was being delayed (no word on when it was to ship) that we'd observed around the community... People were just curious what the headsculpts would look like and we were trying to get that answered since the pack was announced and people had a curiosity about that (since the question about the Stormtroopers being clean was definitively answered in a previous Q&A).

That said, we beat ourselves to our own question, and answered it with one of our news stories during the week... It was a moot point. We got helmetless images of the Fleet Trooper in a completely separate story... It was still a good valid question that Hasbro was WILLING to answer if they could have... It wasn't asking about something unknown and getting a "wait and see" answer because people wanted to know if (Insert Random Figure Name Here) was coming out next year.

While you feel a question asking for a random figure would've been better... we do not. I honestly don't think we'll see the Tantive IV battlepack displayed at Toy Fair since it's due for release pretty soon, but it could happen. Either way... if you waited to see things at conventions, why ask any questions in the first place? People seemed pretty happy seeing the RFT a little early just as there was lots of happiness/talk generated by the Galactic Marine seen without his helmet when we asked for that... You don't like those questions, that's fine spacejunker, but at the end of the day it seems the majority liked the answers they got and it certainly felt better getting something than getting "wait and see" out of Hasbro.

That's not to say character-specific questions aren't able to get slipped in sometimes, it just means it's better when there's something giving that question credence to pull an actual response out of Hasbro...

There's plenty of sites weekly who use their questions to ask for random characters... I'm sure one of them will be ready and willing to submit those questions you have for them. Our Q&A's being run a little differently though since we're trying to actually get answers to questions out of Hasbro that they're willing to spill the beans on... The Q&A's not a "submissions list" of character names and such for what you want produced in the line afterall. If that's esoteric in nature... so be it. I don't quite see it that way at all though and we're more than happy with the results the Q&A has given us so far.

Not every other site's looking at it as you are though, where they feel just getting a character's name out into Hasbro's mind through the Q&A is a positive even if it yields a dead-end answer. Maybe that thought can make some of the frustrated more content with what they're given in terms of answers from Hasbro?

First I can tell by your response you are taking this way too seriously. If you are bothered by my comments, I appologize. The fact that I am spending time responding to this tells me that I am taking this way too seriously.

I mainly follow this site because of the private store reports. I started picking this stuff up after my son got hooked watching attack of the clones on DVD. I started to pay attention to this site after I became frustrated finding empy pegs everytime I went to the store during most of 2005.

As I stated earlier my son had asked me the question and at the time I thought it was worth posting. IF I had known I would have gotten this reponse I wouldn't have bothered to ask this question. Your right I can/did take the question and read reasonable response on a different site.

Actually, we asked that because A) Hasbro's given us photos in the Q&A so we were testing that again... And B) it was something of a curiosity about the pack that was being delayed (no word on when it was to ship) that we'd observed around the community... People were just curious what the headsculpts would look like and we were trying to get that answered since the pack was announced and people had a curiosity about that (since the question about the Stormtroopers being clean was definitively answered in a previous Q&A).

I think this is pretty convoluted reasoning for selecting that question. If people were curious about the about the battle pack delay, directly ask that question. They have answered that question before on other things, especially if the delay is longer than anticipated. For everything else see my first comment.

That said, we beat ourselves to our own question, and answered it with one of our news stories during the week... It was a moot point. We got helmetless images of the Fleet Trooper in a completely separate story... It was still a good valid question that Hasbro was WILLING to answer if they could have...

I am sorry, but I still think this was a poor question, especially since you were able to obtain the answer from a different source within a week from when the question was asked.

While you feel a question asking for a random figure would've been better... we do not. I honestly don't think we'll see the Tantive IV battlepack displayed at Toy Fair since it's due for release pretty soon, but it could happen. Either way... if you waited to see things at conventions, why ask any questions in the first place? People seemed pretty happy seeing the RFT a little early just as there was lots of happiness/talk generated by the Galactic Marine seen without his helmet when we asked for that... You don't like those questions, that's fine spacejunker, but at the end of the day it seems the majority liked the answers they got and it certainly felt better getting something than getting "wait and see" out of Hasbro.

I thought this particular question was a poor choice and reasoning that you provided for the selection of that question a little sublime. I am not attacking every question JD posed, I am stating this particular question could have been better selected. At this point I would have rather had a "we will see" response. I would be more curious about some of decsion making process that Hasbro goes in selecting or not selecting a specific vehicles than whether they have a picture of some figure with his helmet off.

That's not to say character-specific questions aren't able to get slipped in sometimes, it just means it's better when there's something giving that question credence to pull an actual response out of Hasbro...

There's plenty of sites weekly who use their questions to ask for random characters... I'm sure one of them will be ready and willing to submit those questions you have for them. Our Q&A's being run a little differently though since we're trying to actually get answers to questions out of Hasbro that they're willing to spill the beans on... The Q&A's not a "submissions list" of character names and such for what you want produced in the line afterall. If that's esoteric in nature... so be it. I don't quite see it that way at all though and we're more than happy with the results the Q&A has given us so far.

Not every other site's looking at it as you are though, where they feel just getting a character's name out into Hasbro's mind through the Q&A is a positive even if it yields a dead-end answer. Maybe that thought can make some of the frustrated more content with what they're given in terms of answers from Hasbro?

First I can tell by your response you are taking this way too seriously.

Not at all... I'm simply explaining to you WHY we ask the questions we ask and tend to ignore the character-specific questions such as "when will you make _______?" type questions. If by "serious" you mean that you expected NO response from the people who work here at the site, well I don't know what to tell you... I posted for the site's benefit, and for the staff's pertaining to the Q&A selection here, the ideas and creative thinking we'd like people to put into their questions... You didn't agree with that and I explained why. You cited a question you didn't like because you'd rather have had a question that had a probability of getting no answer because you feel it influences Hasbro's decision making on action figures (and what they'll produce or consider), and I explained why we don't feel that's probable and don't feel it's worth using up one of our 3 slots every week (or every other week now, as it were).

I guess that depends on your definition of taking things too seriously... Since I do work here though I'm trying to make it as abundantly clear as possible the how's and why's of the selection process since there's a lot to ask and Hasbro's given us some distinct precedents to work with in the Q&A's.

And completely separate here, I hope the store reports bit is working out for you since the Cali group can be pretty active and that's an area that's reportedly pounded with scalpers, collectors, and everything else.

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I think this is pretty convoluted reasoning for selecting that question. If people were curious about the about the battle pack delay, directly ask that question. They have answered that question before on other things, especially if the delay is longer than anticipated. For everything else see my first comment

I don't think you really understood what I wrote... There was no curiosity about the delay of the battlepack... Well, nothing that required a question anyway. I think it's fairly established on that pack actually that the Stormtroopers being dirty was what held it up and why it's delayed into 2007's BP assortments... I could be wrong on that but off the top of my head that was the reasoning Hasbro gave at some point or another.

The reason we asked for pictures of the Fleet Trooper's headsculpt was because people were simply curious, knowing the Troopers had new headsculpts with removable helmets, what the troopers would look like. Some consider that a substantial improvement on the figure... Since the pack was announced, images had surfaced of the set boxed/loose, we decided to ask Hasbro for a photo of the Trooper sans helmet... It didn't have to do with the pack's delay, so I'm not sure what you meant there. It was simple curiosity to see something new up close... much like our request to see the Galactic Marine figure sans helmet, which Hasbro obliged.

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I am sorry, but I still think this was a poor question, especially since you were able to obtain the answer from a different source within a week from when the question was asked.

And as I noted, that's fine by us that you weren't happy with the question... At the worst it's no less/more information than we would have obtained asking a dead-end question, so to me personally I'm no more happy or disappointed with Hasbro's response to it...

Though about the photos we did obtain early, that really has no impact one way or the other on the question we asked... Why it disappointed you even more since we got the photos on our own is a mystery then. What we can/can't obtain via sources is completely up in the air, usually till last minute, so we got the photographs to use and we ran with them knowing we'd submitted that question a little less than a week prior to Hasbro answering it... I guess to simplify it; How are we supposed to know that we're going to dig up a news scoop on our own, and just incase we do aren't supposed ask Hasbro about something they may answer themselves?

As I noted, the reasons we asked that question were that the pack was announced, there had been some images... We wanted to see the changes made up close, and Hasbro's photo actually would've done well for that had we not gotten our own image to use. But either way it's no better/worse a question than one that wouldn't get answered too.

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I thought this particular question was a poor choice and reasoning that you provided for the selection of that question a little sublime. I am not attacking every question JD posed, I am stating this particular question could have been better selected. At this point I would have rather had a "we will see" response. I would be more curious about some of decsion making process that Hasbro goes in selecting or not selecting a specific vehicles than whether they have a picture of some figure with his helmet off.

Well, as I noted... Our reasoning for trying to avoid the "we will see" answer is we view it as a guaranteed wasted question. I know you cited the argument that it gets the character's name out there, it gets it into the subconcsious minds of Hasbro somehow, but I think you underestimate how many characters they're always pondering over at Hasbro. And to us that hopeful idea that they'll at least consider something since it got mentioned isn't a fantastic reason to use a question up. Sometimes maybe, but not generally when you can get actual answers and information out of them too, about something you haven't seen/heard yet.

I know you're not attacking every question we ask, and I'm trying to give you the reasons why we don't run with many questions... It's a weeding out process. To us, our site ran with the question you dislike because it had a reasonable chance of getting answered and there was curiosity about the subject... not by you obviously, but other people found it interesting (at least they found the story we posted with photos we got early interesting). Some questions in our log maybe would've been better, we don't rank them, but they'll get asked eventually if the Q&A continues steadily for the extended future. If worse came to worse all we'd ask is "when will we get ____________" type questions for lack of question asking most likely. Depends how long the Q&A runs I suppose.

I hope that helped clarify the point... I don't think you caught some of that information the first time. The question definitely wasn't asked because there was any curiosity why the battlepack was delayed at least. That wasn't implied in anything I read back through anyway. It just got asked because people were curious about the headsculpts on the Troopers.

Since many of the characters are based off of 100% CG creations, has Hasbro tried to gain access to the specific character color palettes used by ILM when choosing the paint schemes for such characters?

You've stated in the past that you have concieved and would like to produce playests, but that they aren't a good move for Hasbro financially. Would you ever consider posting concept art of the pieces that are unmade? It would be a very "Art of Star Wars-y" type thing to do.

The Biggs bit is definitely a good question... I've been a little perplexed by that myself. Odd omission. I thought it was a fluke more than anything but it's missing in the photo and Toy Fair... I think if we don't ask that this go-round, someone will, but we'll keep it in mind as a good candidate.

To answer a few e-mail questions Iíve received, no there will be no cape packaged with the Biggs Darklighter figure, and there just isnít time to make the correction. Or at least thatís what they told us. We honestly donít know where the communication gap happened, but keep in mind that even LFL doesnít have 100% source material for every costume and character. It just fell through the cracks.

Basically, they forgot it and no one caught it until it was too late...

Or the Behind the Magic CD-ROM that features the full sequence with Biggs and Anchorhead...

When in doubt Hasbro, ask someone... Oh, say, around here.

How does Hasbro miss this stuff? I mean, isn't everyone working on these lines, or at least 99% of them, huge Star Wars fans? You'd think one person on a particular project team would notice something like this during planning.